Skull and Bones review

What is it? A live service take on ship-on-ship combat, with origins in an old cherished Assassin's Creed game.
Expect to pay: $60
Release date: Out now
Developer: Ubisoft Singapore
Publisher: Ubisoft
Reviewed on: RTX 3060, Ryzen 5 5600H, 16GB RAM
Steam Deck: Not playable
Link: Official site 

The appeal of Skull and Bones is laser focused. It's about being on a boat. You have to want the fantasy of sailing big pirate boats and you need to not want much else for your time and money. You may come wanting to live the fantasy of being a ruthless waterborne pilferer, but to live that fantasy you first need to love sailing a boat in the direction of crafting materials. 

In Skull and Bones you're allowed to get off your boat, but only to interact with vendors, mission-givers, mayhaps a buried treasure chest. In the vast island-dotted expanse of the Indian Ocean there are two major pirate settlements where blacksmiths, carpenters, refiners, and most «contracts» (missions) are doled out, both for the main quest and its endgame component. 

There's also a great rash of outposts that are functionally identical, playing host to a handful of vendors, the odd treasure chest and some perfunctory loot. You can't whip your sword out and get all cutthroat. No, your violent desire to misappropriate various hot 17th century commodities is all done from behind the wheel. In many ways, you don't sail a boat: you are the boat.

After over a decade in development and with all the writing on the wall, I knew Skull and Bones would be Assassin's Creed: Black Flag by way of the waning full-price live service zeitgeist. I loved that older game. The boating around and the fighting with other boats lent a scale to the then-familiar Assassin's Creed format that seemed to blow salt up your nostrils and sand in your nether regions. It was richly atmospheric: you could smell it. Skull and Bones does recapture that atmosphere,  but marrying it with the banal rigmarole of modern live service graft results in